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Re: booting 500 MHz G4 from cd?



On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 12:47:46PM +0200, Stefan Kluth wrote:
> 
> Hm, the screen turns black after the few yaboot messages and then stays

are the yaboot messages erased? or do they remain?  when the kernel
starts it clears the screen, so if yaboot messages never disappear
then its more likely that yaboot is failing rather then the kernel.

> that way. My CD contains a directory 2.2.16-2000-07-26, presumably thats

no that is the boot floppies version.  the kernel is some varient of
2.2.17presomething. 

> the kernel version. Is there a way to get more output on the screen to see
> whats is actually going wrong? 

it sounds like a very early failure, perhaps in yaboot, i don't think
there is anything you could do short of recompiling yaboot to get more
info.  

> Any hints on how to replace the kernel on a CD image so I can write the CD

is this just a .iso image? or a collection of files that is used to
create an .iso?  

i am not real familier with how your image is actually being built,
but i am familier with how it works, all you would need to replace is
/install/powermac/linux which is the kernel image.  you could also
replace /install/powermac/yaboot with a debug build (you can get one
of those from my web page in the yaboot section, see my .sig) 

> again (I use CD-RW) or does a non-standard kernel mean I must use bootx or
> some other tool to boot from MacOS? I am not sure about floppies, since
> our Mac only has an external USB floppy drive. 

if you have a macos partition available you can boot from that, but
you have to dink with OpenFirmware to do it, simple mount the CD you
have under macos and copy /install/powermac/yaboot and
/install/powermac/linux and /install/powermac/yaboot.conf, and
/install/powermac/root.bin to the root of a macos partition, then edit
the yaboot.conf and change:

...
device=cd:
timeout=50

image=\\install\\powermac\\linux
        label=debian
        initrd=\\install\\powermac\\root.bin
...

to:

device=hd:
timeout=50

image=linux
        label=debian
        initrd=root.bin
...

assuming its the internal primary master IDE hard disk.

then boot into Openfirmware (command option o f at boot) and type the
following:

boot hd:X,yaboot

where X is the partition number you put yaboot and the kernel on, note
that macos partitioned disks have a load of cruft partitions at the
begining whihc macos will not let you see so you may have to guess,
the first partition in macos is probably 6 or 7 (maybe even 8) in
reality. 

don't use bootx on that machine it works quite poorly if at all on
these machines. 

if the same kernel that is on the CD (and same yaboot) boot from hard
disk but not from the CD then there is something broken somewhere
(maybe just on that piticular hardware) if it fails from disk too then
its something broken in yaboot or the kernel in regards to that
machine in general.  

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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